


HELP!!

by urdearestmom



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, I need help, help me decide!!!!!!, this is like a choose your own adventure book, this is not one fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 16:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16163027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urdearestmom/pseuds/urdearestmom
Summary: basically i have two very interesting fic ideas possessing me and i don't know which one to focus on first bc i do NOT have time for both. so i figured i'd post the first chapter of each of these fic ideas and let my prospective readers tell me what they would prefer to read first :)





	1. the 90s fic

**Author's Note:**

> help me out here guys gals and nonbinary pals!!!!! this first one is a fic that takes place in the 90s, but it follows the canon of the show. so, everything that happened in seasons 1 and 2 also happened in this fic. it is somewhat inspired by Full Circle by LBorealis (phenomenal fic and if you're reading this i love you) but of course with my own twist >:)

**Wednesday, January 10, 1996**

It had been an ordinary day. He’d gotten up early, gone to work, worked, and was now on his way home. But then-

Michael Wheeler was only minding his own business picking up his prescription at the CVS down the street from work when those two women showed up. The purple haired one, a little shorter than the blue haired one, told the cashier there was a leak in the washroom. 

Mike looked in that direction himself and didn’t see anything, but the cashier ran off in a panic to check it out. By this point in his life, Mike had learned to trust what he saw. Something fishy was going on. 

The purple haired one started grabbing toiletries off the shelves as the blue haired one went to the lone dry foods aisle with a swish of her bob. The two women hadn’t seen him standing at the pharmacy counter in the back, and since the pharmacist seemed to be taking eons to find the _exact same_ prescription Prozac that Mike picked up on the same day every month, he was the only one in the open store with them. But he was tired. He’d worked from nine in the morning to eleven at night and forgotten to take his last dose at lunch, and it was weighing on him. Plus, the women looked like the type of people who were probably armed. He wasn’t going to stop them. 

But he would investigate. 

The pharmacist returned just as the door shut with a gust of cold air behind the women. “Here you are, Mr. Wheeler,” he said, handing over the white paper bag that shook with the sound of pills. 

“Thanks,” he responded distractedly, handing over his payment before shoving the meds into his coat pocket and pulling his scarf up his face.

Outside, he didn’t see anyone suspicious. The night was oddly calm for January in Boston, no snow falling in his eyes. The sky was inky black with a few stars in it. His boots crunched over ice as he walked to the nearest stop to catch a bus home.

“Weird,” Mike said out loud, his breath puffing out in a white cloud.

 

**Thursday, January 11, 1996**

Mike woke up the next morning with his heart racing from the dream he’d had. He could only recall a vague idea of it, but he knew it was the same type of recurring dream he’d been having for the last seven years. 

And he knew it was probably never going to happen. If she’d wanted to find him she could’ve by now. She was either dead or just didn’t want to see him ever again. 

He stretched on the futon and turned over to grab the TV remote from the floor. A small, used, TV sat on the ground across from him and he flicked it on to Channel 7, the glow from the screen bathing the water-stained and cracked walls of the shitty apartment he lived in blue.

There was a news report about some man in Florida who’d attempted to wrestle an alligator and ended up in hospital, but Mike wasn’t interested in that. He wanted to see if there were any reports about the two women he’d seen the day before. Surely the CVS employees would’ve noticed that some things were gone, or that there was never a leak. The store cameras probably picked up on stuff. He was just waiting.

Mike spent the entire morning on the futon, obsessively watching the news for anything that might be suspicious. He ate a bowl of dry cereal he’d left out the day before, now stale, and an apple that was halfway to rotten. He didn’t have much money left after paying rent and bills for the shittiest apartment in the world, so he had to stretch what was left in his kitchen before going grocery shopping. He left for work frustrated that he hadn’t seen anything at all. 

Macy’s was a depressing place to work at, but Mike was kind of numb to things anyway. His meds helped, of course, otherwise he wouldn’t be taking them, but they were never going to be able to cure him. He’d probably be better if he actually hung out with people, but his formerly-close friends were scattered across the country after college and the friends he’d made during weren’t really close to him in the first place. He hadn’t let them be. The only people Mike saw regularly were his coworkers. 

His family was also estranged. He thought about them from time to time, wondering what they were doing. Nancy was the only one he still talked to. He’d seen her at Christmas when she came up to Boston to spend it with him in his tiny box of an apartment, but he hadn’t spoken to his parents since the argument he’d had with them after graduation about staying in Boston indefinitely. Of course that meant he hadn’t seen Holly in about two and a half years either. 

Since Nancy had left, his parents had wanted Mike to return to Hawkins and get a job so he could eventually settle down, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d spent the second half of senior year of high school itching to leave, to search the world for her, and by going to college he could do something with himself that might be able to help him find her. Boston was close to MIT, and for some reason, he had a good feeling about the city. It was something he knew he needed to follow because he usually had good instincts, but his parents didn’t see it that way. They threatened to cut him off if he didn’t come back, and when he didn’t they did exactly as they said. He was living off of what he made at Macy’s, a little more than minimum wage. 

Mike had gotten his degree in computer science and he knew he could probably get a better job than what he had, but if he did then he wouldn’t have time to do what he really wanted. He’d learned to hack in college, so after he’d saved enough and bought his computer he would routinely hack into government servers searching for information. The Boston police never had anything of appeal, but the Department of Energy, his main interest, sometimes did. It was hard to crack into, though, so he wasn’t able to do it often. He’d never been able to hack onto the FBI, though he was certain that if he ever did, he’d find a treasure trove of questionable things.

The afternoon and evening passed the same way they usually did: quietly. There was exactly one cranky customer, but Mike wasn’t even at the register when that happened so it wasn’t his concern. It was close to closing when something caught his attention: a bluster of cold air entered the store behind two women dressed all in black. He couldn’t see their faces, just as he hadn’t seen the blue-haired one’s the day before, but he could see that one of them was the same purple-haired woman from the CVS. The other one could’ve been the same person except that she had long red hair reminiscent of Mike’s old friend Max. 

“Could be a wig,” he muttered to himself, hiding behind a shelf. The two walked forward and the cashier didn’t react. None of the employees in the front of the store did, either, which Mike thought suspicious until he realized they were all within the purple-haired woman’s line of vision.

He wasn’t. 

_She’s doing something._

Mike watched as the redhead went to the other side of the store, her purple-haired companion following with her arms held up close to her body in what seemed to be a protective stance. To his luck, they hadn’t spotted him, and he had a feeling that even if they did they wouldn’t make a fuss about it. He decided he’d make use of their obliviousness to his presence and shuffled into the back as quickly as he could. 

He got dressed and grabbed his bag, clocking out and running back into the store and then out the door with a yelled, “I gotta go!” To his confused coworkers. 

The two women were still inside, so Mike hid around the corner of the building and waited for them to come out. They did before long, and he watched them walk away for a little, far enough that he could follow without them noticing. He suddenly had a burning desire to know who they were, why they were stealing from stores, and how they did it without anyone noticing. It was more intense than anything he’d felt in months, far surpassing the short thrill he got every time he hacked into private servers. The whole situation reeked strongly of X-Men type shit, things he’d dealt with at one point in his life and had thought were over when she left. 

Once they were at a good distance, Mike started walking after them so as not to lose them. He trailed after them for a time, carefully noting his surroundings so he could remember how to get back there if necessary. The three of them ended up in a seedy looking neighbourhood full of shady houses and a big warehouse at the end of the block. Mike figured the women might be going in there, so he let them get further ahead as he watched. 

He was right. As soon as they went inside, he ran after them, stopping upon reaching the door and trying to puzzle out how to get in without them noticing. He looked around and spotted a ladder bolted to the side of the warehouse, leading up to a balcony of sorts and a large window that was slightly opened. Mike climbed up and lifted the window the rest of the way, peeking inside before sticking one of his legs through. He’d been lucky the window was open and also that he hadn’t fallen off the icy ladder. 

His heart was pounding against his ribs as he prowled through the room, finding nothing and proceeding to make his way out onto another balcony. This one was shrouded in shadow, overlooking a large room downstairs that was lit up by floodlights pinned to the bottom of the platform Mike was on. If he stood directly over one he would be practically invisible in his black coat. 

The women he’d tailed there were in the middle of the room. There were two ratty old mattresses on the floor and the redhead was laying on her side on one of them. Mike still couldn’t see her face, which would make it a little hard to identify her if circumstance called for it, but he could see the purple-haired woman clearly now. Her features were twisted in anger. 

“What do you mean, you don’t want to come?” She snarled. 

The redhead murmured something. 

“We’re sisters! We are a team! You cannot just leave everything to me.” The purple-haired woman had some kind of accent that Mike couldn’t place, and he wished he could hear the redhead speak to see if she was the same. 

Suddenly, she sat up violently, her hair whipping around her shoulders. “I told you I’m _tired!_ You can do it yourself, you were doing it for years before I found you! Leave me alone for tonight.” 

Mike felt like someone had cracked an egg over his head, a coolness flowing down and settling on his shoulders, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The redhead’s voice was shockingly familiar and had a decidedly Midwestern lilt to it, but he couldn’t place her either. He watched as she lay back down and wrapped herself up in the raggedy blanket that was on top of her. 

The purple-haired woman sighed and crossed her arms. “Is this about the boy again? It’s been several years.”

Her sister muttered something in response from beneath the blanket. 

“I know you do, but hurting yourself like this isn’t helping anyone.” The purple-haired woman stood there for a second more before sighing. “I have to go. We _will_ talk about this later. And we _will_ get her back.”

She walked through a doorway that Mike couldn’t see from his position, and a few moments of breathless silence later he heard the outside doors open and close again. Something about these two women was pulling him in; he needed to know who they were. The redhead’s voice seemed to reach out to him like a siren’s call, beckoning him to her side. Maybe if he saw her face he’d know where he recognized her voice from.

But he couldn’t expose himself just yet. 

So he waited some more. Mike sat on the platform staring at this person he felt an almost magnetic pull to, seeing if she would fall asleep. After about a quarter of an hour of watching her, she stopped wriggling on the mattress and stayed on her side, facing away from him. Even better, because then if she _wasn’t_ actually asleep, she wouldn’t see him. 

Mike got up as quietly as he could and made his way to the iron stairs leading to the main floor, going down one step at a time as lightly as possible. He managed to get all the way down, glancing at the woman for any signs of consciousness every few seconds, and then absconded to another room through an open doorway he saw. 

In there, he pulled the cord to turn on a weak lightbulb and looked around to see a box on a table. It was open and he peeked inside to see all kinds of IDs piled on top of some folders at the bottom. The folders caught his attention, so he dug through the plastic keycards and such to get them out. 

The first one had newspaper clippings in it, with recent ones on top and old ones going back to the late sixties and early seventies, all about missing kids. Mike saw a few about a woman named Terry Ives, a woman he’d met before. _She_ had introduced them. That was when he knew for sure that those two women, the one gone and the one sleeping in the other room, were connected to the lab in Hawkins. At least one of them, the purple-haired one, had abilities of some kind; that much was suddenly clear. Maybe they could tell Mike what had happened to their sister. 

The second folder was just as interesting, if not more; it contained files on those missing kids. Files that looked like they had been kept by the lab, if the Hawkins National Laboratory logo stamped on the bottom of every page was anything to go by. Listed were names and dates of birth, blood types, the ability that each child seemed to possess, and results of innumerable trial experiments along with a picture clipped to the top of the first page. Mike sifted through the pile looking for one in particular, and when he came across number eleven he stopped short. 

The picture had probably been taken shortly before she escaped because she looked about the same as she had when he’d first met her. Eleven’s terrified twelve-year-old face stared back up at him and Mike almost felt like throwing up. He’d known about her past, of course, after she’d decided to tell him about it, but hearing it from her mouth and seeing tangible proof of it were two different things. He’d been in the lab as well, but by the time he’d first gone in there, all that type of equipment had been removed. Looking in the folder was horrifying knowing what had really been done to those kids.

Suddenly, Mike heard rustling and a quiet voice. 

“Kali?” 

It was the redhead. Mike’s eyes shot to the doorway to see her starting to sit up. He shouldn’t have stayed. He looked around quickly, heart in his throat, before spotting a window on the other side of the room that looked like it would be big enough for him to escape through. He plucked at the light cord, turning the lightbulb off and receiving an angry yelp from the other room. Darting in the direction of the window, Mike yanked it open and vaulted himself through it, landing in the snow outside in a heap of limbs. 

He scrambled up and ran opposite the way he’d come as fast he could, stopping after a minute to catch his breath in a copse of trees. The freezing air burned his lungs and he bent over, wheezing. He stood there for a few minutes to let his heart rate go back to normal before standing back up and blinking furiously at the slew of feelings that had blurred together inside of him tonight. 

Mike started to laugh; a deep rumbling laugh punctuated with wheezes as the cold air burned him some more. He probably sounded like a madman but he didn’t care, there was no one around to hear! He felt delirious, like he was high on actually feeling something positive for once. 

Only as he started to make his way home did it register in his mind that the name the redhead had called out had been _Kali._ That was a name Mike recognized. It was the name of _her_ sister, the one she’d found when she’d run away to Chicago when she was thirteen. 

He _knew_ staying in Boston had been a good idea! If anyone was bound to know what had happened to her, it was Kali. 

He’d be back. 


	2. titanic au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so this one is a titanic au! i had the idea for this a long time ago but only recently did i start to develop the plot more. IT DOES NOT FOLLOW THE PLOT OF THE MOVIE!! it is based on the actual events but with our beloved characters thrown into the mess :) 
> 
> on a historical note: the word "Negro" appears here as it would have been the word used to describe a black person at the time. however if anyone finds this offensive please let me know and i will change it.

**April 9th, 1912**

**Noon**

_Southampton_

It had all started because Nancy didn’t know when to stop. Mike understood her, he agreed that women should be able to vote, but did she _really_ have to get herself arrested?

She’d been at a suffragette rally in Piccadilly Circus when the London police had shown up and forced a shutdown on the protest. Nancy, along with some other women, had refused to leave quietly and so had been arrested for “disturbing the peace”. Mike wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten word to him and not their grandparents (who apparently didn’t believe in women’s rights and coincidentally would not have been happy about her arrest), but he’d had to spend most of the money he had left just to bail her out. The rest was used for train tickets to Southampton, a stay of a few days there, and a telegram to their mother in New York. He had very little left, just enough to cover a ticket on _Titanic,_ the next ship out to New York. He was going to have to figure something else out for his own passage across the ocean since his sister’s stubbornness had caused them to miss their ship. 

That’s how he finds himself on Southampton dock, looking up at the largest ship he’s ever seen, and trying to find someone who’ll give him a job aboard her. 

“Oi! Move out of the way, boy!” He whips around and almost gets bowled over by a group of men pushing a cart loaded with crates of what Mike guesses are vegetables. Or at least that’s what it looks like, if the carrot top hanging out of one is anything to go by.

“Excuse me,” he yells, trying to get the man’s attention again. “I need work, do you know if I can get any on her?”

The man doesn’t turn around, Mike going unheard over the din on the dock. Seagulls squawk overhead, the waves are rolling, and all around people are shouting orders and talking over each other. Somewhere, there’s a child simply screaming. One of those goddamned birds suddenly makes a dive in the direction of Mike’s head and he ducks, not noticing the large rock next to his foot. As a consequence, he trips on it and falls, landing with a thud in the dirt where he lets himself lie for a moment to inhale some quality dust. 

A high, reedy voice interrupts his misery. “Did you say you needed work?”

Mike lifts his face off the ground to see a small, elderly man wrapped in a hole-ridden cloth standing above him. The man is staring at him inquisitively with bright eyes. 

“Yes,” Mike answers, quickly pushing himself off the ground. “Yes, I need work. Can you help?” 

The man now seems much shorter, only hitting around just below Mike’s shoulder, but he’s still quite strange-looking and he’s giving Mike an uneasy feeling. The man smiles crookedly, showing several missing teeth. 

“Go down where they’re loadin’, sonny. Might let you be a steward.”

Mike blows his hair away from his face and claps his hands together in thanks. “Thank you so much, sir!” 

The man only chuckles darkly as Mike walks away. 

He finds another man, this one dressed much more appropriately for working on a ship, which makes Mike think he’s found the right type of person. The man is standing by the gangway and directing other men up onto it and off of it, loading crates of supplies. 

“Excuse me, sir,” Mike says, tapping the man’s shoulder. “Someone told me I might be able to get work if I came down this way?” 

The man turns and looks down at Mike. He has a moustache and he looks intimidating. “What kind of work are you looking for?” He asks gruffly. 

“Anything that’s available, sir, I just really need to be on this ship,” Mike says in a rush, willing his hands to stay by his sides and not start fidgeting with his jacket cuffs like they usually do.

“She’s only leaving tomorrow, boy, is that soon enough for you?” The man asks. It seems like a kind question, but Mike feels like the man is challenging him.

Mike nods. “Yes, that’s perfect.” 

The man looks at him for a few moments more, as if appraising him, before nodding. “I’ll be here tomorrow morning at seven sharp. Find me.”

Mike walks back to the hotel with a spring in his step. He’s going home tomorrow! It works out perfectly, actually, since he could only have paid to stay one more day.

“Nancy,” he calls when he gets into their room, “we’re going home!”

* * *

  **April 10th, 1912**

**11:30 am**

_Southampton_

Max never wants to go home. The Hargroves are one of the richest families in America right now, or so they want everyone to think, but the truth is that Neil Hargrove has gambled all of his money away and needs to marry off his stepdaughter in order to get some. Max is set to be married to the son of some wealthy ranch owner in Texas as soon as she gets there. She’s never even met the man she’s supposed to be spending the rest of her life and having a family with, but her mother insists that that’s how it’s done. 

Max thinks it’s stupid. When she gets married, she wants it to be for love, not to save her stepfather’s name from his own idiocy. It’s not like he even deserves it; Neil has been anything but kind to Max in the years since he married her mother. The thing is, she can’t really escape even if she wants to. Who would hire her if she’s never worked a day in her life? A woman alone and penniless (as she would be) in New York City isn’t a good idea. Not to mention that her borderline psychopath stepbrother is accompanying her home, watching her every move. Everything is just a mess and Max doesn’t want the voyage to ever end. 

This morning is like any other, except for the fact that her dread is peaking. The ship is _colossal._ It’s taller than anything around them and longer than any other ship she’s ever seen, she doesn’t even know how it’s floating. 

The dock is bustling with people so Max isn’t surprised when she gets jostled, but she is irritated when she sees that it’s just Billy being his usual bonehead self. 

“Watch where you’re going, Billy,” she says shortly. 

Billy turns an angry face on her. “Watch your _mouth_ , Maxine,” he spits.

Max stays silent, fuming. She wants anything but to walk up the gangway into the ship, but that’s where Billy starts taking her. Her hat casts a shadow as wide as her body, and she thinks it’s ridiculous that high fashion has come to forcing women to wear such large hats. Billy shows the officer at the top their tickets and he greets her with a smile, a nod, and a “Miss” as she passes through the door and into the resplendent inside of the White Star Line’s greatest achievement. 

It is quite nice on the inside, Max isn’t going to complain about her quarters. Her stateroom is lovely. She just wishes that she was on this ship able to enjoy herself instead of dreading the moment that it docks in New York. 

She sighs and sits down on her bed for a second before jumping back up, not letting her nervousness overtake her. Billy will likely lock himself in his own room until dinner, so she won’t have to deal with him for at least another two hours. With that, Max decides to go back up on the boat deck to watch her freedom disappear as England does.

The deck is full up to the railings with passengers waving to people on the dock, yelling things like, “I’ll miss you!” and “See you on the other side!” Max stands more toward the prow and grips the railing tight, looking into the water below and contemplating whether anyone would notice if she jumped off and swam away. 

She’s looking out at the horizon and feeling the familiar burn of tears in her eyes when the ship’s horn sounds, causing her to jump and raise a hand to her chest in fright. Out of the corner of her eye she sees a man near her stand to attention. He had previously been casually leaning on the railing, but when he saw her reaction he stood straight and moved away. When she fully looks at him, she realizes why: he is dark-skinned. He probably thinks she’s going to be disgusted at having seen him at all. 

When she isn’t, the man relaxes and tentatively calls out, “Are you alright, miss?” He’s probably English-born or has lived in England for a long time. Either way, his accent is decidedly not American. 

Max nods and turns away. She can’t be seen talking to this man. She herself has never understood what’s wrong with associating with Negroes, but she knows that most people have issues with that and if word were to get back to Billy… She shivers to think about it. 

The man seems to understand that Max isn’t interested in a conversation, so he walks in the opposite direction. Max stays at the railing, feeling the _Titanic_ ’s engines start up. A lone tear drips down her face and the breeze dries it off for her as the ship leaves port.

* * *

  **Le 10 avril 1912**

**18h 35**

_Cherbourg_

Éléonore lies in wait. She’s hiding behind a pile of people’s baggage on a loading cart, ready to jump onto it at the next moment. The ship she’s going to get on is stopped a ways out, too big for Cherbourg’s dock. The passengers are getting onto a tender that will take them out to the ship, but Éléonore doesn’t have a ticket. She couldn’t have bought one for any ship even though she had the money, because then Papa would have found her. 

So she’s waiting. Waiting for the perfect opportunity to hide between people’s trunks when they’re loaded so that she gets onto the tender too. Once it’s far enough out, she will slip from her place and mix with the crowd. No one will be the wiser.

Her opportunity comes when the men on the dock are helping the last of the passengers into the tender. No one is paying attention to the baggage cart and Éléonore conceals herself in a folded pile of fabric. It’s probably a sail, it feels like a sail. A few moments later she hears the voices of men coming in her direction, and they begin pushing the cart toward the tender. There’s a bit of bumping and Éléonore tries her best not to move so as not to give herself away, letting out a relieved breath when she feels herself placed on the tender. She lies still for a while longer, waiting until she thinks the tender is far enough away from shore that it’s safe for her to come out. 

When she does, she does so carefully to avoid attracting attention. Éléonore stands and straightens her dress, glad that her hair is easy to fix into a presentable style so that she looks like the upper-class lady she has been raised to be. She has kept her best dress clean in all the days since she left home for the sole purpose of being able to blend in on a ship like this one. 

Éléonore had devised her plan long before actually arriving in Cherbourg, and it was now to go through perfectly. She stands behind all the third-class passengers, sticking out very obviously in her eye-catching, newly-fashioned dress. Her plan is to pretend to have been put on the wrong tender and act disgusted and offended. Hopefully this will cause the people in charge of boarding to let her on without questioning her.

“Excuse-moi!” She calls to the nearest man in a naval outfit. She schools her face into a revolted expression as he turns to face her. He looks shocked, which is, of course, Éléonore’s preferred reaction. 

“Miss!” He exclaims. “What are you doing here?” 

Éléonore shoves her way through the throng to stand before the man with her arms crossed, her bag at her feet. “I cannot believe you ‘ave put me on zis boat with zese- _rats!_ ”

The man pales. “I’m deeply sorry, miss, it must have been an accident. A terrible accident. You aren’t meant to be here.” 

Éléonore only glares. “I should complain,” she says sternly. Internally, she praises God for Papa having taught her when and how to present displeasure to get something out of it. 

The man clasps his hands. “I wouldn’t blame you for it, but I reckon it’d be better for everyone if you didn’t. I’ll make sure you’re let onto the ship immediately.”

She sniffs. “Merci.” 

Soon, the tender is alongside the enormous _Titanic_ , doors open to welcome the passengers. The man Éléonore spoke to is the first to rush up the gangway, speaking to the other man waiting at the entrance before turning and summoning her with a wave of his arm. She makes her way forward through the crowd with her nose in the air, glancing at the others through the sides of her eyes. She’s never done this before, but she’s seen her Papa do it any time they are anywhere that they might be faced with people poorer than him. Éléonore doesn’t enjoy having to act this way, but she won’t deny that it is quite useful. 

She walks onto the ship with no questions asked, the officers merely smiling nervously at her, and brushes them off in mock-disgust when one of them offers to escort her to her quarters. As she walks deeper inside, she breathes out in relief at having made it. Now she just has to find somewhere to hide until the ship docks and she can get off.

Papa has always told her that she’s a clever girl… she can only hope that this time she will be cleverer than he. He can’t find her. And in America, he won’t.

* * *

  **April 10th, 1912**

**7:25 pm**

_Somewhere between Cherbourg and Queenstown_

Will and Jonathan are just sitting down at a dining table for supper when there’s a commotion in the corner. Someone’s child has spilled their gruel on the only Negro Will has seen on the ship, and the child’s mother seems to be yelling at the man about it even though it clearly wasn’t his fault. She’s also yelling in a language that the man doesn’t seem to understand, and Will can’t identify it either. The man doesn’t respond in any kind, simply making his way out of the room to eat his own bowl of gruel and some chunks of cheese. 

Will turns to his food and begins eating, but he can sense his brother looking at him.

“What?” Will asks. 

Jonathan gives him a wry grin. “You wanna go after him, don’t you?” 

Will rolls his eyes and gathers up his gruel, cheese, and biscuits before making his way out of the dining saloon. Upon stepping into the hall, he sees the man heading to the aft staircase and follows. 

The two of them climb up until they reach the poop deck, and if the man hears Will’s footsteps echoing behind him, he doesn’t show any sign of it. They both sit down on a bench facing the waves and eat. 

Neither of them says anything until they’re both finished their cheese and gruel.

“Would you like a biscuit?” Will offers. 

The man stares straight ahead, stone-faced. Will almost doesn’t hear what he says. “Why did you follow me?” 

“What?” 

“I asked why you followed me,” the man repeats tightly. He has a bit of a British accent. 

“Oh.” Will contemplates this for a moment. “Because I wanted to.”

The man seems surprised at this, like no one has ever sat down and eaten with him because they wanted to. 

“You didn’t come to scream at me for that child spilling his food on me?” He asks, gesturing to his now stained shirt. 

“No,” Will answers. “I don’t think you deserved that. Or that you deserved to eat alone. Now, do you want a biscuit?” He offers again. 

The man acquiesces, taking a biscuit from Will and beginning to eat it. Will starts eating one too and sticks out his hand to shake. “I’m Will.” 

The man finishes chewing and wipes the crumbs from his mouth before grasping Will’s hand. “Lucas.” 

“Pleasure to meet you, Lucas,” Will says cheerily. “Where are you rooming?” 

Lucas thinks for a moment. “F-twenty.”

Will cocks his head. “Why didn’t you come in earlier? That’s the room my brother and I are in.” 

Lucas shrugs. “People like you don’t like people like me. I was going to come in at night and leave early so whoever I was bunking with wouldn’t see me.” 

“That’s nonsense,” remarks Will, frowning. “Come and go whenever you’d like, we won’t mind.” 

“Thank you. That means a lot.” 

The two of them sit in silence again, until Will thinks that he should probably get back to Jonathan before he starts to worry. Lucas says he’ll stay on the poop deck for a while more, but that he’ll see them later. 

Will waves goodbye and makes his way inside, heart light at the feeling of having made a new friend. He wonders, though, if Lucas can tell what kind of secret he’s hiding.

* * *

**10th April, 1912**

**23:43**

_Somewhere between Cherbourg and Queenstown_

Lucas wonders if Will really meant any of what he said or if his seeming acceptance is just a cruel joke. He’s so busy contemplating this and then moving on to what his life in America might be like that he almost doesn’t notice the woman rushing by him.

He sits up to watch her pass and realizes it’s the same woman he saw in the morning. She’s a redhead, possibly one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen- but she’s rich. And she’s white. 

He’s not. 

It’s probably for the best if he stays away from her, although he does question what brings her to this part of the ship. Lucas knows he wasn’t supposed to be where he was when he first saw her, but the likes of this woman would never cross into somewhere they might encounter steerage passengers such as himself.

She stops at the benches furthest aft and sits, pushing her face into her hands. Lucas can hear her sobbing from where he is, and perhaps it mightn’t harm anyone if he checks that she’s alright. He’ll just have to be careful not to get too close.

“Miss?” He calls, walking closer. She doesn’t react, so he stops a few paces away from her and repeats himself. “Miss, are you alright?” 

Her head whips up and Lucas’ heart squeezes when he sees her tear-streaked, blotchy face. She’s far from alright. 

Her eyes narrow. “Are you stalking me?” She’s American and Lucas wonders where from. 

“No,” he says awkwardly, shoving his hands into his pockets. He gestures behind him to the bench he’d been sitting on. “I was just over there and I reckoned I’d check to see if you needed help. You didn’t sound very good.” 

The woman- or girl, rather, Lucas can see now that she’s up close that she most likely isn’t any older than sixteen, close to his meagre seventeen- hides her face again. “I can’t be seen speaking to you. If my step-brother catches wind of this, he’ll kill me.” 

Lucas deflates. He should’ve expected it, but it still hurts every time he’s rebuffed like this. He’s never understood why people of her kind have taken it into their heads that they’re somehow better than he is because they’ve got a different skin colour. He’s still a person, just like they are. They were all born the same and will all die the same. 

So he huffs offendedly. “I only wanted to see that you’re alright, but I suppose I should go, then.”

He’s walking back to his bench when he hears the tell-tale clack of heeled shoes on the wooden deck. Lucas turns round in surprise to find the girl trailing after him uncertainly. She looks remorseful. He raises his eyebrows. 

“I’m sorry,” she says wetly, “I don’t mean to be this way, I just- he might _actually_ hurt me. I’m certain he’s insane.” 

Lucas chooses not to respond. He can see that she isn’t finished yet. 

The girl shakes her head and clasps her shaking hands together. “I don’t know you but I’ve seen you twice today and you have been the only person to ask me how I’m feeling. You seem to be the only person on this ship that cares a smidgen and you don’t even know me!”

She begins to sob again, a few strands of her vibrant hair falling in front of her face as she lowers her head into her hands. Lucas puts a hand at her back and another at her elbow and leads her to the nearest bench, seating himself next to her and awkwardly patting her back.

They sit there until she calms herself and their teeth are chattering from the cold night air. Lucas is just watching his breath cloud in front of him, marvelling at how this is the second time tonight he’s sat in more or less companionable silence with a white person, when the girl sniffs a final time and wraps her arms tighter around herself, tying the thin shawl she wears over her shoulders in a large knot at her bust. 

“Thank you,” she says softly. 

Lucas shakes his head and picks at his fingernails. “With all due respect, miss, I haven’t really done anything.” 

“No,” she answers, placing a steadying hand atop his, “you’ve done quite a lot. Just by sitting here with me. It’s more than anyone else has.” 

His chest warms at her words, but he plays nonchalant. “Really?” 

“Really,” the girl says, and she smiles. She’s even more beautiful when she smiles. “I’m Max Mayfield. Maxine really, but I hate that name, so please call me Max.” 

She’s introducing herself?! Her hand is out and Lucas doesn’t know whether he’s supposed to shake it or-or kiss it or something? His question is answered when Max takes his hand herself and shakes it vigorously. She raises her brows, much as he did earlier, when he says nothing. 

Lucas’ words trip over themselves in his mouth as he rushes to answer. “Er- yes, er- I’m Lucas. Lucas Sinclair.”

Max smiles again and Lucas sort of feels as though he might faint. He must have gone and knocked his head and dreamed this up. “It is my pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sinclair.” She lets go of his hand. “But I think I might call you stalker instead, since you keep showing up. I find it… quite suspicious.” 

Her eyes are sparkling as she looks at him, but then he sees the light go out of them like a candle blown. Her whole face drops. “I’d better go, I’ve been out here far too long. Billy will be on the lookout.”

Lucas scrambles to stand as Max gracefully lifts herself from her seat. “Please,” he says quickly. “Say we’ll meet again?” There’s something inexplicable between them and Lucas doesn’t want to let it go so quickly. He feels that, perhaps they’ve met in another life. It’s quite disconcerting to feel but he knows it’s important. 

Max hesitates, throwing her gaze around the deck as if checking, only now, for unsuspected passengers. Her eyes slide back to his. “Meet me by the bridge at quarter to noon tomorrow,” she replies, then vanishes rapidly into the shadows on the port side of the ship.

* * *

**11th April, 1912**

**11:35**

_Queenstown_

“ _Steve!_ Can you believe your bloody eyes?!”

Dustin is excited, to say the very least. The ship’s bloody _huge!_ The two of them had decided to make the most of the little money they had and use it to try for a better life abroad. If Ireland couldn’t give them what they needed, maybe America could. 

Steve had practically adopted Dustin after he’d run away from home. Steve’s parents had lost all their money and died, leaving him on the streets, and Dustin’s father had left his mother pregnant. She’d married another man, but at only ten years old, Dustin had been sent off. His stepfather beat him and his mother and she couldn’t do anything about it, so in the middle of the night one night, his mother had come to him and pressed a bundle of clothes, food, and a little money into his arms and told him to get as far away as he could. He’d cried and begged, but in the end he’d left. 

He’d never really forgiven his mother for not leaving with him, but he swore that one day he’d go back for her. Not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of her. 

Dustin had then ended up in Cork, where he met Steve shortly after. Steve was a few years older and knew his way around, so Dustin stuck to him like a leech and the two soon became thick as thieves. They’ve spent the last six or so years being poor as church mice but surviving, _together_ , and so they’ve decided to embark on this greatest of adventures, together.

Beside him, Steve lifts a hand to shade his eyes from the sun, nearly overhead. The _Titanic_ is clearly visible from where they stand on the dock, almost monstrous against the horizon. 

She could be their ticket to a beautiful life. Dustin is shaking with anticipation. He can almost taste the freedom America promises! 

“Bloody huge, she is,” Steve says. 

“Thanks for the observation, ya ninny,” quips Dustin. “I can see her!” 

Steve glares at him. Dustin laughs and rubs his hands together. The tender they’ll be getting on is just docking and the Irish passengers are crowding around it. Once they’re on it, having been checked for lice and all that, Dustin stands at the side and feels the salty sea air whip through his hair. It’s glorious, for one, and for another thing, Steve looks ridiculous. Perhaps they both need haircuts, but the curliness of Dustin’s hair lends it a certain appeal. Steve’s just looks greasy and flat, and with him facing into the wind with it flapping up in his face, he looks like a rooster. 

Dustin can’t think of anything funnier in this moment, and starts giggling again. 

Steve doesn’t speak to him until they’re inside the ship, searching F deck for their room. 

“Don’t do the thing,” he says. 

“What thing?” Dustin asks innocently. He knows exactly what Steve’s on about. 

Steve groans. “That stupid, shitey growl thing you do. You’ll scare our bunkmates before we even properly meet them, ya maggot.”

To answer, Dustin does the stupid, shitey growl thing. Steve looks like he’s going to combust, but then perks up. “F-twenty!” 

The pair walks into a room with six bunks, three of which are clearly occupied, although one of the occupants is not present. The two who are look like brothers. They’re playing a game of cards. 

Steve immediately sticks out a hand to greet their bunkmates for the next few days, introducing himself. “Steve Harrington, pleasure to meet you,” he says, shaking the hand of the shorter one. 

“Will Byers,” he introduces, “and this is my brother Jonathan.” The taller one waves. 

“Dustin Henderson,” Dustin adds. “Glad to meet you. Where are you lads off to?” 

Jonathan puts down his cards as Steve takes his and Dustin’s bags to the last set of beds. “We’re Americans, we’re headed home to our mom and stepdad. We’ve been in France and England for a few years but it wasn’t working out.” 

Will nods in agreement. “What about you two?” 

Steve pipes up from the back. “We’re going to get rich!” 

Jonathan and Will laugh good-naturedly and Dustin pumps his fist. “Full speed ahead, boys, Dustin’s on his way!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment and tell me both what you thought and which story you'd like to read from me first!

**Author's Note:**

> please read the next chapter for the second fic idea and let me know in the comments how you feel about each of these and which one you would like to read first!


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